Napier University has been given government money to bring a new type of engineered timber beam to market based on UK-grown sitka spruce.
The University’s Centre for Timber Engineering has been awarded £200,000 to perfect its Composite Insulated Beam (CIB), which a research team led by Dr Abdy Kermani and Professor Robin Mackenzie have been developing over the past 12 months.
The CIB sandwiches Sitka spruce flanges and double webs with urethane or expanded polystyrene. The end result, said Dr Kermani, is a product that can rival LVL and glulam in strength, but is also very light and has “very good insulating properties”.
“We see it being applied in general housing structural applications and for heavy duty use such as lintels and edge beams,” he said. “It is also suitable for large span use. So far we have got up to 4.8m, but finger-jointing the beams together we believe we can go further than this.”
He added that the beams will provide another use for Sitka from forests in Scotland and the rest of the UK.
“In its natural state, Sitka is generally in the C14/C16 range, so the CIB beam will open up whole new areas for the timber.”
The new grant from the Scottish Executive‘s Proof of Concept fund, will support two years’ of research into the CIB’s structural performance, stability, durability, fire resistance, sound and thermal insulation, comparison with other structural materials and manufacturing processes and costs.
“We are confident it will be very price competitive with other products,” said Dr Kermani. “When the research is complete we will look either at setting up joint ventures to manufacture the CIB with engineered wood products or timber frame companies, or set up our own manufacturing operation – or we could possibly do both.”
